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Sunday, December 9, 2007

The War With the Weasels

Long, long ago, I was complaining that a message board that I'd been frequenting for ages had of late become overrun with the, let us say, less entertaining types, and that I didn't see any way of reversing the trend. Chris commented in his droll fashion, "The munchkins always win."

I always thought that was a very wise observation, but the term "munchkin" is hard to explain to people who don't play RPGs. So I switched it with "weasel", having the right connotations of nastiness, cowardliness and patheticness.

I played around with the notion for a while and for some reason (this really was years ago, so cut me a little slack, here) I was looking at a photo of a lion sitting and looking all majestic and the idea of a lion fighting with a weasel came to me. And I realised that lions just don't fight weasels. They don't do it. Lions do not belong to the class of things that fight weasels.

Now I know which I'd rather be, between the choice of a lion or a weasel. And we're going strictly with the metaphorical notion of these creatures, so please refrain from confusing the issue with facts. Weasels = snivelling conniving cowards. Lions = majestic honourable lords.

And so, WANTING to be a lion, I am forced regularly to remind myself to never, ever, ever, fight with the weasels.

Because the weasels always win.

I've talked about this before. Not sure if I have so much to add to the notion this time other than an awfully pretty picture of a lion. Nice, isn't it? Mm.

But like I say, every so often I have to remind myself to remain a lion. To refuse to fight the weasel fight. Because to fight the weasels is to become a weasel yourself. Because lions don't fight weasels. To be a lion, you have to let the weasels win. When the weasels arrive, you have to recognize what has happened and move on.

Lions help weasels best by being lion-y: sitting out there on the savannah, being all majestic and shit. That's what lions are for. They remind us that dignity and honour are worth something, even if they don't help you to win. Winning is for weasels. But maybe, sometimes, IF the lion is being all majestic and shit, some random weasel will look up and think, "Hey, why isn't he down here fighting with the rest of us?"

And maybe sometimes a weasel can even BECOME a lion. Maybe. I don't know. But I am pretty sure that if there aren't any lions, then there's just a bunch of weasels, so somebody has to try and be a lion.